Tanking in SWTOR

Are you guys looking forward to it? I sure am. I love tanking in WOW as it's quite possibly the most challenging and pressuring role. (No disrespect to healers, that's tough as hell too). However, as seen by the current state of wow (tanks=instant queue, need bribe--um, bonus satchels to to encourage players to tank), tanking can be too difficult and frustrating. Doesn't help that people love to hate on the tank unfairly.

Interestingly enough, a lot of polls seem to point to a decent portion of people rolling tank ACs. Why do you guys think this is so?

In my personal viewI see two ways it could lead. 1. If Tanking is as challenging as wow, this could lead to a lot of newbie tanks messing up a lot and ragequitting. 2. If Tanking is faceroll easy, PVE becomes a joke, kinda. And healers seem to get little love. From videos though, I have to say... dungeons seem to be quite forgiving. The DPSers getting hit by the bosses really don't get hit that hard. But ofc that's just a demo so yeah.

I see 2 big reasons for why there are a lot of tanks.
1. Able to taunt and guard in pvp.
2. Ranged tanks.

But I have never been a big fan of tanking so I'm not sure. It will be interesting to see how that works out at endgame, having a higher ratio than in other games. Hopefully they don't make the same mistake as blizzard and make 1 or 2 tank fights for every size group. When you only need 1 or 2 tanks for 25 people raids, it is no wonder there are not enough for 1 every 5 man instance.

Ah yes the guard ability. Almost forgotten about that. I think that + bursty DPS classes (Jedi Shadow) could lead to possibly imbalanced combination. Possibly, classes would be balanced around tanks casting guard on them (and thus being somewhat fragile without Guard), or they are pretty strong on their own right, leading to Guard pushing them into "wtf, this guy is unkillable!!!" territory.

I could be mistaken, but last I heard the guard ability was 50%. And that's before the various mitigation/dodge checks.... PVP is either going to be a completely awesome or incredibly frustrating affair. I hope they impose strict limits on this.

Ah yes the guard ability. Almost forgotten about that. I think that + bursty DPS classes (Jedi Shadow) could lead to possibly imbalanced combination. Possibly, classes would be balanced around tanks casting guard on them (and thus being somewhat fragile without Guard), or they are pretty strong on their own right, leading to Guard pushing them into "wtf, this guy is unkillable!!!" territory.

I could be mistaken, but last I heard the guard ability was 50%. And that's before the various mitigation/dodge checks.... PVP is either going to be a completely awesome or incredibly frustrating affair. I hope they impose strict limits on this.

It forces you to make choices. The old philosophy of "kill the healer" is not the only usable strat anymore. It may be more productive to kill the tank, or split the attacks. Focus fire when needed. I don't see te 50% being game breaking, but it certainly is game changing, which is good.

From what I read recently, they're not full on ranged as you think - Troopers spend their time much closer to the combat than ranged DPS, I don't have the quote now, but they said it was strange and hard to keep clear who had aggro when the tank could be miles behind you, so they shortened the range of them and added more flashy effects like shield explosions so that it wouldn't feel too weird being too close to them with a Gun, since all your attacks aren't from your gun, you've also got things like hitting them with the end of the gun, and the retractable blade in your glove for instance, so there's at least two melee attacks too - we're certainly more ranged than the Jedi Knight Guardian for instance, but I wouldn't expect to be sitting fully tanking at range all the time - perhaps only during pulling or when you need to for kiting or something, but I think in general you'll want to get in close with the action to use all your abilities. At least based on the recent interview, I think it was on Republic Trooper.

But I have never been a big fan of tanking so I'm not sure. It will be interesting to see how that works out at endgame, having a higher ratio than in other games. Hopefully they don't make the same mistake as blizzard and make 1 or 2 tank fights for every size group. When you only need 1 or 2 tanks for 25 people raids, it is no wonder there are not enough for 1 every 5 man instance.

I don't think tanking will be too difficult, though the ratio of 1tank/1healer/2dps means you need even fewer dps, so hopefully tanking and healing will be rewarding enough to want to do it. Though without a dungeon finder mechanic, I"m not so sure it matters as much.

Scaling almost has to be thrown off at 16, at 8 you can double your 4mans, but at 16, I doubt you'll have 4 tanks, 4 heals, 8 damage. (assuming I'm remembering the group sizes correctly!)

---------- Post added 2011-11-06 at 04:28 PM ----------

I hope they do have some ranged "bosses" that are directional ("face away from group" makes it easy to tell who has agro, it's the guy it's pointing at), but I'm not really worried about suspension of disbelief to that extent.

I'll probably do a trooper and consular, then decide which becomes a tank and which becomes a healer.

That's fine Rae. I just like the general idea of it, even if I can't kill a boss from 40 yds.
I'm a fan heavy armor, and big guns. The very definition of a tank.

For sure - they look very cool in SWTOR, and I'm very glad that Vanguards use the Rifles rather than the huge assault gun things, they're a little over the top for my liking, while the rifles look far cooler in my opinion and much more like a guy that means business.

personally i would have to disagree with you about wow, tanking is not the hardest job. It hasnt been for 2 years (arguabley longer since tbc). Now getting dps who actually fulfil the dps they are meant to do, thats the hardest part ive found.

Don't forget that every AC essentially gets three talent trees, only one of which will be tanking even for the tank ACs, so you can't assume all Sith Juggernauts are tanks any more than all Warriors or Paladins are in WoW.

I'm always a tank so yes I'm very very very much lookin forward to tanking like a BAWS! on my Tankassin.

as for difficulty, dont forget, we've not seen much higher level content (unless you are teh l33t hax0rz) so far all the official flashpoints I've seen have been VERY low level, mostly pre-AC, and the only raid they showed was a HEAVILY tuned down version of the first boss of the first raid, and they still wiped

so I'm hoping/guessing that once we actually get into the game we'll find tanking in high level heroic Flashpoints (btw are they still called Heroic mode, or do they have a different name?) will be just as challenging if not more so than in WoW currently (I'd love it if the heroics could be as hard as the Cata ones where on release, not the overnerfed ones we have now) and raids in normal mode will be a challenge, but not THAT hard, think prenerf firelands, and then hardmodes will be ROCK HARD, think a statue of Jet Li carved out of granite, then covered in adamantium.

but hey, that's just me

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